Bosom Friends Part 8

"I should think I am; and what's more, I mean to!" declared Belle; and settling the dispute as Alexander of old untied the Gordian knot, she took her penknife from her pocket, and leaning over, cut the painter off sharp.

"_Now_ you've done it!" cried Charlie. "Well, we're off, at any rate, so we may as well enjoy ourselves.--Hilda, you must steer while I row. If you watch me feather my oars, you'll see I can manage the thing in ripping style."

There was such a strong ebb tide that Charlie had really no need to row.

The boat went skimming over the waves as if she had been a veritable stormy petrel, sending the water churning round her bows. Although all four children felt a trifle guilty, they could not help enjoying the delightful sensation of that swift-rushing motion over the sea. Nearly all Anglo-Saxons have a love for the water: perhaps some spirit of the old vikings still lingers in our blood, and thrills afresh at the splash of the waves, the dash of the salt spray, and the fleck of the foam on our faces. There is a feeling of freedom, a sense of air, and s.p.a.ce, and dancing light, and soft, subdued sound that blend into one exhilarating joy, when, with only a plank between us and the racing water, it is as if nature took us in her arms and were about to carry us away from every trammel of civilization, somewhere into that far-off land that lies always just over the horizon--that lost Atlantis which the old navigators sought so carefully, but never found.

Isobel sat in the bows, her hand locked in Belle's. She felt as if they were birds flying through s.p.a.ce together, or mermaids who had risen up from the sea-king's palace to take a look at the sun-world above, and were floating along as much a part of the waves as the great trails of bladder-wrack, or the lumps of soft spongy foam that whirled by them.

Charlie rested on his sculls and let the boat take her course for a while; she was heading towards the bar, straight out from the cliffs and the harbour to where the heavy breakers, which dashed against the lighthouse, merged into the rollers of the open sea.

"Aren't we going out rather a long way?" said Belle at last. "We've pa.s.sed the old schooner and the dredger, and we're very nearly at the buoy. We don't want to sail quite to America, though it's jolly when we skim along like this. If we don't mind we shall be over the bar in a few minutes."

"By jove! so we shall!" cried Charlie. "I didn't notice we'd come so far. We must bring her round.--Get her athwart, Hilda, quick!"

"I suppose if you pull one line it goes one way, and if you pull the other line it goes the other way," said Hilda, whose first experience it was with the tiller, giving such a mighty jerk as an experiment that she swung the boat half round.

"Easy abaft!" shouted Charlie. "Do you want to capsize us? Turn her to starboard; she's on the port tack. Put up the helm, and make her luff!"

"What _do_ you mean?" cried Hilda, utterly bewildered by these nautical directions.

"You little idiot, don't tug so hard! You'll be running us into the buoy. Look here! you can't steer. Just drop these lines. I'd better ship the oars and hoist the sail, and then I can take the tiller myself.

There's a stiffish breeze; I can tack her round, you'll see, if I've no one interfering. Now let me get my bearings."

"Are you sure you know how?" asked Belle uneasily.

"Haven't I watched old Jordan do it a hundred times?" declared Charlie.

"I'll soon have the canvas up. I say, look out there! The blooming thing's heavier than I thought."

"Oh, do be careful!" entreated Belle, as the sail went up in a very peculiar fashion, and beginning to fill with the breeze sent the boat heeling sharply over.

"She'll be perfectly right if I slack out. The wind's on our beam,"

replied Charlie; "I must get her a-lee."

"You're going to upset us!" exclaimed Belle, for the sail was flapping about in such a wild and unsteady manner as seemed to threaten to overturn the little vessel.

"Not if I make this taut," cried Charlie, hauling away with all his strength.--"Hilda, that was a near shave!" as the unmanageable canvas, swelling out suddenly, caught her a blow on the side of her head and nearly swept her from the boat.

Hilda gave a shriek of terror and clung wildly to the gunwale.

"O Charlie!" she cried, "take us back. I don't like sailing. I want to go home."

"Oh! why did we ever come?" shrieked Belle, jumping up in her seat and wringing her hands. "You'll send us to the bottom."

"Sit still, dear," cried Isobel. "You'll upset the boat if you move so quickly.--Charlie, I think you'd better take down that sail and try the sculls again. If you'll let me steer perhaps I could manage better than Hilda, and we could turn out of the current; it's taking us straight to sea. If we can head round towards the quay we might get back."

"All serene," said Charlie, furling his canvas with secret relief.

"There ought to be several, really, for this job; it takes more than one to sail a craft properly, and none of you girls know how to help."

He gave Isobel a hand as she moved cautiously into the stern, and settling her with the ropes, he once more took up the oars.

"I shall come too," wailed Belle. "I can't stay alone at this end of the boat. Isobel, it's horrid of you to leave me."

"Sit still," commanded Charlie. "It's you who'll have us over if you jump about like that. We can't all be at one end, I tell you. You must stop where you are."

He made a desperate effort to turn the boat, but his boyish arms were powerless against the strength of the ebbing tide, and they were swept rapidly towards the bar.

"It's no use," said Charlie at last, shipping his sculls; "I can't get her out of this current. We shall just have to drift on till some one sees us and picks us up."

"O Charlie!" cried Hilda, her round chubby face aghast with horror, "shall we float on for days and days without anything to eat, or be shipwrecked on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe, and have to cling to broken masts and spars?"

"We're all right; don't make such a fuss!" said Charlie, glancing uneasily, however, at the long waves ahead. They were crossing the bar, and the water was rough outside the harbour.

"I _know_ we're going to be drowned!" moaned Belle. "It's your fault, Charlie. You ought never to have brought us."

"Well, I like that!" retorted Charlie, with some heat, "when it was you who first thought of it, and asked me to take you. I suppose you'll be saying I cut the painter next."

"You want to throw the blame on me!" declared Belle.

"No, I don't; but there's such a thing as fair play."

"O Charlie, it doesn't matter whose fault it was now," said Isobel. "I suppose in a way it's all our faults for getting in, to begin with.

Couldn't we somehow raise a signal of distress? Suppose you tie my handkerchief to the scull, and hoist it up like a flag. Some ship might notice it."

"Not a bad idea," said Charlie, who by this time wished himself well out of the sc.r.a.pe. "You've a head on your shoulders, though I did call you a land-lubber."

Between them they managed to tie on the handkerchief and hoist the oar, and as their improvised flag fluttered in the wind they hoped desperately that it might bring some friendly vessel to their aid.

They had quite cleared the harbour by now; the sea was rough, and the current still carried them on fast. Isobel sat with her arm round poor little Hilda, who clung to her very closely, watching the water with a white, frightened face, though she was too plucky to cry. Belle, who had completely lost self-control, was huddled down in the bows, shaking with hysterical sobs, and uttering shrieks every time the boat struck a bigger wave than usual.

"I wonder no one in the harbour noticed us set off," said Isobel after a time, when the land seemed to be growing more and more distant behind them.

"They were busy packing the herrings," replied Charlie, "and you see we started from round the corner. Our only chance now is meeting some boat coming from Ferndale. I say! do you think that's a sail over there?"

"It is!" cried Isobel. "Let us hold the flag up higher, and we'll call 'Help!' as loud as we can. Sound carries so far over water, perhaps they might hear us."

"Ahoy there!" yelled Charlie, with the full strength of his lungs. "Boat ahoy!" And Hilda and Isobel joining in, they contrived amongst them to raise a considerably l.u.s.ty shout.

To their intense relief it seemed to be heard, as the ship tacked round, and bearing down upon them, very soon came up alongside.

"Well, of all sights as ever I clapped eyes on! Four bairns adrift in an open craft! I thought summat was up when I see'd your flag, and then you hollered.--Easy there, Jim. Take the little 'un on first. Mind that lad!

He'll be overboard!--Whisht, honey! don't take on so. You'll soon be safe back with your ma.--Now, missy, give me your hand. Ay, you've been up to some fine games here, I'll wager, as you never did ought. But there! Bairns will be bairns, and I should know, for I've reared seven."

"Mr. Binks!" cried Isobel, to whom the ruddy cheeks, the bushy eyebrows, and the good-natured conversational voice of her friend of the railway train were quite unmistakable.

"Why, it's little missy as were comin' to Silversands!" responded the old man. "To think as I should 'a met you again like this! I felt as if somethin' sent me out this mornin' over and above callin' at Ferndale for a load of coals, which would 'a done to-morrow just as well. It's the workin's of Providence as we come on this tack, or you might 'a been right out to sea, and, ten to one, upset in that narrer bit of a boat."

It certainly felt far safer in Mr. Binks's broad-bottomed fishing-smack, though they had to sit amongst the coals and submit to be rather searchingly and embarra.s.singly catechised as to how they came to be in such a perilous situation. Their plight had been noticed at last from the harbour, where the owner of the boat, missing his craft, had raised a hue-and-cry, and there was quite a little crowd gathered to meet them on the jetty when they landed, a crowd which expressed its satisfaction at their timely rescue, or its disapproval of their escapade, according to individual temperament.

"Praise the saints ye're not drownded entoirely!" cried Biddy, giving Charlie a smacking kiss, much to his disgust. "And it's ould Biddy Mulligan as saw the peril ye was in, and asked St. Pathrick and the Blessed Virgin to keep an eye on yez. Holy St. Bridget! but ye're a broth of a boy, afther all."